During a meeting with reporters last week for the Charles Schwab Cup at Desert Mountain Club, someone asked Tom Lehman if he had given any advice to U.S. Ryder Cup captain Davis Love III.

Lehman, who was captain of the U.S. team in a losing effort in 2006 at the K Club in Ireland, said he had spoken to Love and gave him the same advice that he gave to Paul Azinger in 2008.

The home captain gets to set up the course, so Love will be doing that at Medinah this weekend. Lehman said that American players are raised on stroke-play golf while the Europeans are raised on match-play golf.

As a result, Americans tend to play a more conservative brand of golf. If a pin is tucked behind a bunker or near a water hazard, the Americans are likely to play to the middle of the green. The Europeans, on the other hand, will "take dead aim" at the pin, Lehman said. They're not worried about losing the hole. They're interested in winning it.

So, he suggested that whenever there was trouble near a green that Azinger put the pin as far away from it as possible. This, he reasoned, would allow the American players to forget the trouble and shoot aggressively at the pins. He said Azinger did that, and the U.S. won 16 1/2-11 1/2 at Valhalla.

Will Love set up Medinah the same way? It's something to look for this weekend.

As we waited to learn ifShane Doanwould remain a member of the Coyotes on Friday, we decided that it didn't matter much whether he stayed or went.

Either way he would have to be the most loyal of Coyotes, and maybe the most loyal athlete in Valley history, given the patience he showed.

Of course, we're glad it worked out. And it made us reflect on those most loyal to our other teams.

Here's one list:

Suns:If you favoredAlvan Adams, who never played for another team and still runs the arena operation, or "The Original Sun"Dick Van Arsdale, who served as a coach, front-office guy and broadcaster after his playing days, we wouldn't argue.

But we're going withDan Majerlebecause the Suns traded him, to Cleveland no less, and hestillalmost returned as a free agent the next summer for a minimum contract over a $3.5 million-per-year deal on the table from Miami.

In fact, he got off a plane to Miami during a stop in Dallas and returned to Phoenix, leaving the Heat and their news conference in limbo. He ultimately accepted Miami's offer but returned to Phoenix to finish his career and now is an assistant coach.

Cardinals:It'sAdrian Wilsonby two touchdowns. He stuck it out with the Cardinals during their darkest days in Arizona and was rewarded with a Super Bowl.

Just recently he took what amounts to a pay cut in an incentive-laced contract extension to ensure that he finishes his career here, freeing up cap space for the club to boot.

Diamondbacks:Luis Gonzalez, of course. The owner once tossed him under the bus by saying there were "whispers" that he might have used performance enhancers, and then the team didn't exercise a $10 million option to keep him.

Still, he let it be known he wanted to return to the Diamondbacks. He now is a permanent fixture at Chase Field and the only Diamondback to have his number retired.

Mercury:Diana TaurasiandPenny Taylor. They came to the Mercury in the same year, although Taylor did skip one season for the Olympics. Both have taken less in a contract to give the team flexibility.

Rattlers:Another tough one.Sherdrick BonnerorHunkie Cooper? Both won a couple of ArenaBowls. Both their numbers are retired. Bonner finished his career in Chicago. Cooper gets the nod because he never played for another team.

A good week

After Arizona upset Oklahoma State last week, someone ticked off the list of big victories pulled off by Pac-12 teams that day for Arizona coachRich Rodriguez. Oregon State over Wisconsin. UCLA over Nebraska. Arizona State over Illinois.

It turned out to be a great weekend for every football fan in the state with a local rooting interest. The Cardinals, of course, rallied behindKevin Kolbto beat Seattle on Sunday.

And Northern Arizona won at UNLV for its first victory against a Football Bowl Series team in 25 years. The Lumberjacks had lost 22 in a row against FBS teams since beating Tulsa in 1987.

It hasn't been that long, however, since all four Arizona teams won on the same weekend. That was Oct. 17-18, 2009 when ASU defeated Washington 24-17; UA beat Stanford 43-38; NAU won 44-23 at Portland State; and the Cardinals won 27-3 at Seattle.

And as long as we're talking history, we figure ASU can move into the Associated Press Top 25 with a win at Missouri Saturday. The Wildcats, who play FBS South Carolina State, are ranked 24th.

The last time the two schools were in the AP Top 25 together was the week of Sept. 12, 1999. ASU was 22nd in that poll, and UA was 19th.

The PGA Tour's FedEx Cup "playoff" system finally has gotten it right. It has delivered drama, golf's biggest names, and set the stage for a dazzling finish at next week's Tour Championship.

Best of all, it finally has given us the golf rivalry we craved.

Rory McIlroy vs. Tiger Woods.

For more than a decade, golf fans hoped for a foil to Tiger. Nobody stepped up for long.

Then came Tiger's infamous downfall. Personal calamity. A bum knee. Another swing change. Drama with his former swing coach and his caddy. A major-championship drought.

How ironic that when we finally get a rivalry, it isn't about who will challenge Tiger?

Instead, the 36-year-old Woods is perceived as the man chasing a fearless young phenom who hits drives to the stratosphere and strikes long irons with a jeweler's precision.

Oh, there are other players who could steal the $10 million winner-take-all prize that comes with the Cup when the playoffs resume at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta.

Among them is Phil Mickelson, who literally has clawed his way back into it with a funky "claw" putting grip that has helped him move into fourth in the standings.

But all eyes at the Tour Championship will be on the pairing of Rory and Tiger, who are first and second in the standings. And this is only the appetizer before the Ryder Cup unfolds at Medinah outside Chicago the following week.

Woods fed the perception that he now is chasing McIlroy when he said last week that "The game of golf is in great hands with Rory -- he's here to stay."

It was a gracious but startling admission. If he didn't pass the baton, he certainly recognized who is going to take it from him.

"Tiger is going through an interesting, humbling process the last three or four years," NBC analyst Johnny Miller said on the conference call. "He's 36, and I think he has realized maybe what's important in life, and maybe it doesn't all have to do with 18 cups out there ...

"I think he still really wants to do great and he'll be driven, but I think he was over-driven before. I think now he's enjoying relationships; he's enjoying friendships. And I think actually he'll be a happier person."

Maybe. But NBC's Roger Maltbie noted that Tiger always has been better as a front-runner than a chaser in tournaments. He's in uncharted water.

"Roger ... hit on a pretty interesting topic," said Chamblee, adding that we all wonder why Woods never has come from behind to win a major championship.

"You can almost look at the first part of his career as one big golf tournament, and he was by far and away ahead ... the best," he said. "And going forward ... he's not the best. He's not in front. Now he's chasing a player.

"And the world doesn't really know if Rory is better than Tiger or Tiger is better than Rory."

This year's FedEx Cup won't settle that argument. But the Rory-vs.-Tiger scenario might settle the argument about the relevance of a playoff system.

The FedEx Cup shouldn't be compared to major championships or the Ryder Cup. It's a money grab designed to inject some juice into the end of the season and entice the game's top players to stick around through the final events.

When it began in 2007 it wasn't widely embraced by fans, or even some players. Woods and Mickelson skipped "playoff tournaments" knowing they could still win the $10 million without being there for all of them.

It also failed initially to create much drama.

Vijay Singh had the thing virtually won before the four-tournament playoff began in 2008. He ended up making a 4-foot putt to clinch the money and barely even drew applause.

"He just won $10 million and nobody in the gallery even knows it," Miller said. "That was the low point, I think, in the whole playoff system."

The tour tweaked the system, resetting the points before the Cup-ending Tour Championship, but even that caused some confusion.

Last year, Bill Haas was 25th going into the Tour Championship, won it and jumped all the way to first in the FedEx Cup. He didn't know until somebody told him.

We're pretty sure that won't happen this year.

The McIlroy-Woods rivalry is just what the FedEx Cup needed. It might also give Tiger what he needs: clarity.

For once he can look through all the clutter and focus on one thing -- beating McIlroy.

It's pretty clear the frenetically paced spread-option offense Rich Rodriguez has installed at Arizona is going to work out just fine under the control of quarterback Matt Scott.

All the Wildcats have done in their first two games is roll up a school-record 624 offensive yards against Toledo and then hang 59 points on a nationally ranked Oklahoma State team that beat Stanford in a Tostitos Fiesta Bowl thriller just last January.

The 2-0 start has been impressive enough to move the Wildcats into the national rankings.

So maybe this is crazy, but we came away from Arizona's statement-making, 59-38 victory over the Cowboys thinking that the difference in the game was the Wildcats' defense.

And how much Rodriguez can get out of his defense ultimately might decide just how much he accomplishes in his first season.

Don't get us wrong here. The Wildcats aren't going to be among the Pac-12 leaders, let alone the nation's best, defensively. They aren't likely to inspire a catchy nickname, like their long-ago Desert Swarm brethren did.

And they're painfully thin. Marquis Flowers, a former Goodyear Millennium High star, was moved from safety to outside linebacker to bolster that unit and get him and safety Tra'Mayne Bondurant on the field together.

But that left the secondary even thinner. Meanwhile, middle linebacker Jake Fischer, who was named the Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Week for his performance against Toledo, has not left the field for a defensive snap in two games.

And the Wildcats aren't big up front. In fact, Rodriguez joked that he looked at Oklahoma State's offensive line warming up and started having some doubts.

"Did you see how big they were?" he asked. "I mean, they were eatin' peanuts off our guys' heads."

The Cowboys and freshman quarterback Wes Lunt went down the field and scored twice before a lot of folks had even found their seats at Arizona Stadium.

Their first two possessions totaled 125 yards in 15 plays and took only 4 minutes, 23 seconds to produce a 14-0 lead, with Lunt hitting Tracy Moore from 9 and 30 yards for touchdowns.

Blowout, right? Well, yeah. But not for Oklahoma State.

"Our staff made adjustments and told us what to look for," Fischer said. "They dialed up a few different schemes, and we didn't panic."

It led to a startling turnaround. After those first two cakewalks to the end zone, Oklahoma State failed to score on six consecutive possessions. That was about all the breathing room Arizona's offense needed.

Sure, Oklahoma State contributed to its own downfall with 167 yards in penalties, making us wonder if the Cowboys had hired Dennis Erickson as a consultant when we weren't paying attention.

But the Wildcats forced four turnovers, with Fischer creating and recovering a first-quarter fumble, and the Arizona secondary recording three interceptions, including Jonathan McKnight's back-breaking interception and 48-yard return for a touchdown.

Rodriguez called it "THE play of the game."

"It's been amazing," Rodriguez said of Casteel's defense. "Guys are playing 90-some plays. We've shortened practices up a little bit, but our guys are playing a lot more plays than we're comfortable with.

"We've got to get these young guys some experience, but they've got to give us a level of trust where we can put them in the game and be confident with them. We've got to get to the point we're not just playing 12 or 13 guys."

Fischer isn't complaining.

"We can handle it," he said.

When Rodriguez departed West Virginia for Michigan in 2007, he couldn't lure Casteel to Ann Arbor and ended up going through two defensive coordinators in three seasons before he was fired.

Rodriguez didn't make that mistake twice. His biggest recruiting coup so far might have been getting Casteel to join him in Tucson.

"He's a very smart guy," Fischer said of Casteel, who also coaches Arizona's linebackers. "He knew exactly what they were going to do. We gave up more yards than we wanted, but we know as long as we get the ball in the hands of our offense, we're going to win games."

In the end, the biggest "call" missed by the NFL's replacement referees Sunday at University of Phoenix Stadium was the call for a timeout Cardinals coach Ken Whisenhunt tried to make seconds before quarterback Kevin Kolb's game-winning touchdown throw to Andre Roberts.

"Thank God for small favors, right?" Whisenhunt said.

Hey, as long as thanks are going out, the officiating crew and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell might want to send some gratitude to the Cardinals defense for doing them a big favor.

Arizona stopped Seattle six times on plays inside the Arizona 15-yard line in the final minute, a stand that not only preserved a 20-16 Cardinals win but probably prevented a full-fledged controversy over the NFL's embarrassing labor impasse with its legitimate refs.

That's because in an act of generosity that did not go over well with the Cardinals, the officials gave the Seahawks an extra timeout that could have changed the outcome of the game.

The confusion began with 42 seconds to play after Seattle quarterback Russell Wilson's pass in the end zone for wide receiver Doug Baldwin fell incomplete and Baldwin was injured on the play.

Head referee Bruce Hermansen announced that the Seahawks would be charged their final timeout of the half because of an injury in the final two minutes, which would have been correct.

Only, he subsequently told Seahawks coach Pete Carroll that the pass was incomplete, stopping the clock, and therefore no timeout was charged. He did not mention that important, and inaccurate, conclusion to Whisenhunt.

"I went out there when the player was down in the end zone and said that is their last timeout, because a player injured in the last two minutes of the half ... if they have to stop play, they have to take their timeout," Whisenhunt said. "So I came back to the sideline thinking that they didn't have a timeout."

After an interference call gave Seattle a first down on the next play, Carroll, with the timeout preserved, called a running play for Marshawn Lynch.

It was good for 2 yards and the Cardinals expected the clock to keep running. But the Seahawks used the timeout they were not supposed to have.

Whisenhunt protested, the officials huddled and NFL officials in the press box communicated with an official on the field via radio.

After several minutes, Hermansen announced that because the earlier pass when Baldwin was hurt had been incomplete, stopping the clock, no timeout was charged for the injury stoppage and therefore the Seahawks still had the timeout to use.

The decision allowed the Seahawks time to run three more plays, but Wilson threw incomplete on each of them.

After the game, Whisenhunt said he planned to get clarification from the league on the rule.

No need.

Hermansen later told pool reporter Kent Somers of azcentral sports that he goofed.

"It was my error," he said. "We gave them the additional timeout because of the incomplete pass stopping the clock before the injury occurred. When in effect, the clock has no bearing on the play at all, whether it's stopped or running. We should not have given them the additional timeout."

It wasn't the first time something like this has happened to Hermansen, a high school football referee from Northern California hired to work as a replacement for the locked out NFL officials.

Hermansen was the head referee for a preseason game between the Denver Broncos and San Francisco 49ers when Denver coach John Fox was called for unsportsmanlike conduct because he challenged a call he wasn't allowed to challenge.

Only, he was.

In that instance, the 49ers recovered their own fumble, and Fox threw his red challenge flag. Hermansen, the Denver Post reported, thought he was challenging the fumble and the recovery, which Fox couldn't do. So Hermansen marched off 15 yards for unsportsmanlike conduct, the penalty for challenging an unchallengeable play.

Problem was, Fox wanted to protest where the ball was spotted, not the fumble or the recovery. Hermansen eventually relented and picked up the flag.

The real officials aren't going to be perfect, either. But at least we can count on them not to make it up as they go.

We mentioned recently that if Nick Foles throws a pass for the Eagles this season, he'll be the first former University of Arizona quarterback to do so in an NFL game since Bill Demory in 1973.

In a really interesting bit of research, Anthony Gimino of tucsoncitizen.com took it a step -- ok, several steps -- further by breaking down what quarterbacks from the other Pac-10 (now Pac-12) programs have done in the NFL since then.

For instance, USC has had 15 quarterbacks who have played in the league since Demory's last pass. Stanford, UCLA and Washington each have had 13 quarterbacks who played in the league.

Arizona State comes in with 12, and will have 13 if BrockOsweiler takes a snap this season.

Washington's quarterbacks have been the most prolific, combining for 135,911 yards and 769 touchdowns. USC was a distant second with 103,900 yards and 589 touchdowns.

Warren Moon accounted for more than 49,000 of those yards for the Huskies along with 251 touchdowns. So imagine how big the gap would be had he not spent six seasons playing in the Canadian Football League before coming to the NFL!

ASU's dozen NFL quarterbacks since the start of the 1974 season rank fourth in yardage and third in touchdowns.

By the way, the next worst QB school in terms of producing NFL products is Oregon State. The Beavers have had four quarterbacks throw passes in an NFL game since Demory.

We caught up with Demory a few years ago, and he said it's "hard to figure" why Arizona hasn't produced at least one NFL quarterback in all these years before Foles.

"Arizona State turns out an NFL quarterback every three, four years like clockwork," he said. "There have been some good quarterbacks (at UA) who just haven't gotten a break or been in the right place at the right time. For a marginal player, that's half the battle."

The Perturb-a-Herb

Despite what his friend Jeff Van Gundy told us this week, ASU men's basketball coach Herb Sendek really can be a funny guy.

When he introduced his two new assistant coaches Eric Musselman and Larry Greer at a news conference, Sendek had an aide put this question on an overhead projector for the media to see:

"Why did we hire Eric and Larry?"

Then he proceeded to tell us why.

Sendek explained that he was supposed to take part in some pregame activities before ASU's football opener and was told to arrive at the Sun Devil ticket office by 5 p.m.

When he arrived at his usual parking lot an attendant told him his pass was not good there and directed him to another lot. So he followed the attendant's directions to the next lot.

Only, the next attendant also said it was the wrong pass and directed him right back to where he'd come from. Now running late, Sendek told the attendant, "I'm back again."

"He said, 'I'm telling you sir, you can't come in here with that pass,' " Sendek said. "So I said -- very respectfully -- 'Do you know who I am? I just happen to be the head basketball coach of the Arizona State Sun Devils.'

"And -- very respectfully -- he said to me, 'That's great coach, but do you know who I am? Sir, I'm the parking attendant and you cannot come in here with that pass!'

"So," Sendek concluded, "the reason I hired Coach Musselman and Coach Greer, coming off the (10-21) season that we just had, is to get my parking spot back. Because they never even told me. ..."

Reach The Heat Index at 602-444-8271 or bob.young@arizonarepublic.com. Follow us at Twitter/BobYoungTHI.

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